


like the dead

by boltplum



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Lives, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Halloween, M/M, One Shot, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27261028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boltplum/pseuds/boltplum
Summary: Steve is drunk, it's Halloween, and he lost Billy in the crowd hours ago.-“You remind me of all the dead people in this town,” Steve says to the new guy, the new asshole, Billy Hargrove.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 7
Kudos: 131





	like the dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flippyspoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/gifts).



> Prompt by the ever creative Flippy! "Steve drunkenly admitting he’s in love with Billy Hargrove at a halloween party not realizing he’s talking to Billy in a costume."
> 
> I wrote it and posted, I'll fix any typos later.

“You remind me of all the dead people in this town,” Steve says to the new guy, the new asshole, Billy Hargrove.

After Nancy walks away. To the kitchen. To drink more than she already has.

Hargrove watches her as she does it. Rakes his blue—very blue—eyes down and up and down again as she grabs another cup full of the spiked punch.

Steve says, “Who the hell d’you think you’re looking at?”

And Billy huffs once, just the once. Short and like all the funny got sucked out with a vacuum.

“What the flying fuck is your deal, pretty boy?”

Steve echoes the huff. Gives it his best Billy Hargrove shot. It’s Halloween and he’s wearing his nice black blazer and his girlfriend is getting drunk out of his company and she’s doing what his mom always does when his dad messes around behind her back and he doesn’t know how to fix it, fix any of it, fix him and Nancy and whatever broke between them when he wasn’t looking.

“Breathe,” Hargrove orders, smearing a hand down his chest. Shoves him a little. “Hagan, you didn’t tell me your King liked to get high.”

Tommy looks at him. Looks at Steve all curious and strange. Chewing on new information that isn’t even real, all from a new guy who doesn’t know shit.

“I’m not high. And stop looking at my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Yeah. Nancy. Over there.” He points where he can see Nancy sloshing her drink around and scowling. “You’re looking at her and I want you to stop right now.”

“Am I looking at her right now?”

“Yeah.”

Hargrove shrugs. The leather of his jacket squeaks loudly, somehow louder than the pulsing music. “Huh. Weird. I’ve only had eyes for you for a while now.”

“Gay,” Tommy sneers, thinks he’s funny.

Six months ago, Steve would have laughed.

The charged humor in Hargrove is replaced with rage in a flash. He’s got Tommy by his neck, drags him in close and growls.

“Hagan.” He puffs on air. Waves a hand around like he’s considering a decision only he knows. “How many ghosts you got around here?”

“What?”

“Ghosts. Bodies. Dead bags of bones who dance in the fucking moonlight. What do you mean, what? Harrington here says I remind him of dead pricks. Should I be glad all my competition’s been knocked off before I showed up, or there a killer around here looking to pick off real gorgeous sonsabitches?”

He laughs. Licks his lips pink.

Tommy laughs nervously. Shakes like a leaf. “Uh. Steve?”

It’s been a while since it’s been anything other than Harrington. Why has Tommy even bothered bringing him up around this guy in the few days since he showed up?

“Not that,” Steve explains and like a beam of moonlight over a grave, Steve shivers under those blues when they land back on him. “You just make me think they’re lucky they’re not around to have to deal with such an asshole.”

Hargrove lets Tommy go. He slinks off somewhere. Only then does Steve notice the way the other boy’s chest gleams with spilled beer. At his boots sits a streamer of toilet paper.

He’s speechless.

Steve pats Hargrove’s bare chest. A return. A pink lip turns up.

“That would be you, tough guy.”

He goes to reel Nancy back in but ends up drinking and messing things up worse than he thought they ever could be.

—

Man, he really hates that guy.

Billy Hargrove is a real piece of work. The guy’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan on Christmas.

He flips the shower faucet back to hot, to scalding. At least as scalding as Hawkins High can afford with their creaking and half frozen pipes.

But Hargrove doubles back, towel around his waist and a swagger in his step.

“You lost?” Steve questions him as he steps under the spray and closes his eyes. To everything; to Hargrove, to the fact he’s newly single and that that word hurts when it never used to.

“Nope.”

“What? Got more platitudes to give me? Some lame pun about fish or clam chowder and how it means I’ll find love again or something?”

“You know what clam chowder is?”

Steve blinks, surprised at the question. He gets soap in his eyes and splutters trying to squint past the pain.

Hargrove giggles. Cups a hand under the spray and sends a decent wallop splashing across Steve’s eyes. It helps, unfortunately.

He does it again, and again, and then Steve is laughing because Billy Hargrove is splashing him in the boy’s gym showers and Steve is the only one really naked anymore and it’s weird.

Steve swats his wrist away. Hargrove’s smiling, tiny and simple.

He blinks and that usual angry set descends over him again. Like he can't allow himself to enjoy a moment.

But Steve’s seen him now. He’s seen past it.

“Hargrove—”

“Billy. Just Billy,” Billy orders, gruff and short and stomps off.

Steve sees him shimmy into jeans without any underwear and he can’t help but wince in sympathy.

—

Billy doesn’t break his nose. He still pinches the bridge, testing the cartilage when he’s in bed that night, bone tired from fighting off monsters from snacking on the kids.

He’s tired.

—

Billy apologizes on Valentine’s day with a box of chocolates. He gives Steve the box and offers up the apology—a simple _sorry I beat your face in_ —in the middle of lunch. It’s packed. Everybody is watching them.

When Steve opens the box, he sees all but one truffle has been eaten. He sighs.

“Thanks.”

Billy laughs and slaps him on the shoulder. After that it’s more than a little hard to shake him.

—

He wouldn’t really call Billy his friend, even though Billy is everywhere he is. Sun, snow, or sleet, the guy’s more reliable than the post office.

Steve wouldn’t really call Billy Hargrove his friend until Summer hits. Until they both graduate and Billy walks the stage with a goose egg for an eye, purple and swollen, and he smiles that pink lipped and sharp toothed proud smile he likes to wear when he knows people are looking at him.

They graduate and get jobs, but still Billy makes time to hang out. Makes excuses and reasons.

He sleeps over once. On Steve’s front step like an abandoned dog. Steve only learned Billy was there the next morning as he tripped on his way to get the paper.

He doesn’t consider Billy his friend even after he learns Billy’s dad beats on him. Not when Max says Billy is being better to her and even drives her and Lucas around to secret movie and ice cream dates.

The ice cream dates are easier, since Billy likes to drop by Scoops most nights after his shift at the pool.

He first considers the possibility Billy might be his friend when Billy somehow manages to patch the canyon between him and Tommy. Patches it so well that Tommy apologizes all on his own.

He only calls Billy his friend when he’s on the floor with a hole where his heart should be and his blood is black and he’s long past what anyone sane would call dead.

—

“I always did remind you of dead people,” Billy tells him as he smacks his black lips together in the floor length mirror. He turns and smirks and cocks a hip that’s so much skinnier than it used to be.

“What?” Steve asks, startled by the claim. When the hell did he ever say that? Why the hell would he say it? “I didn’t—”

Billy’s smirk softens. “Last year at Tina’s. First time we met.”

“...Oh.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Steve.”

“No. No, I know. Guess I just forgot. Seems like forever ago.”

“Twelve months ain’t so long.” Billy pops a piece of chewing gum between his lips. A replacement for the cigarettes he can no longer smoke because of the missing lung. “Anyway, I’m getting fucked up tonight, so get your insults in while you can. I’m sure you have a few saved up.”

Steve frowns. He eyes Billy fidgeting last minute with the way his shirt sits on his shoulders. He spray painted a black tank with white to evoke the illusion of ribs. His face is a skull, his arms painted white and black to match. Hides his scars, gives him an excuse to go sleeveless for the first time since summer, since Starcourt, even though it’s freezing out.

Steve’s the only one who’s seen him shirtless since it happened.

He swallows, feeling the secret he’s tried so hard to keep under lock and key from spilling out of him.

“I don’t.”

Billy shakes his head. Pulls at his shirt and scowls. Steve grabs his arm to keep him from messing with his outfit anymore.

“You can’t pussyfoot around me forever, pretty boy. You won’t break me. I’m not—”

“Made of glass. Yeah, I know.”

But truth be told, Billy kind of is.

Steve smiles anyway and ushers his friend out of his room, his house, into the BMW he promised Billy could drive.

Billy does, and slams on the gas the whole way to Tina’s.

—

Steve loses Billy halfway through the night. He’s also more than a lot drunk.

He’s also feeling sorry for himself.

He can’t even be honest with himself let alone with Billy. It’s been eating him up ever since the hospital.

Billy could hardly stand to piss without help and Steve had been there and things had—had evolved. Changed.

But it was only on Steve’s end. Billy couldn’t know. He would hate Steve forever if he found out and—

He needed another drink. He was tired of going in the same circle.

Masks had been broken out shortly after they arrived. Masquerade spin the bottle or whatever. Steve was almost twenty and hadn’t played spin the bottle in ages. And even as he sat and he spun and he kissed Tina and Carol and Carlotta and Tommy—to the howling laughter of everyone else—all he could think about was his pathetic predicament with Billy.

Steve’s never been very good at sitting on a secret. Not good at lying.

The masks come out and someone slips it over his eyes. It smells like plastic and glitter rains over his face and shirt but he doesn’t care.

The next round people get up and switch out. He thinks he kisses Mary next, then another guy he thinks might have always watched him a little too long in the showers during sophomore year. He can’t pinpoint the rest.

Lights dim, change, the music is changed over, new alcohol is brought out. Someone shouts to the crowd sometime much later that Steve Harrington should reclaim his crown as Keg King.

He doesn’t feel like it. He disappears into the crowd of people, hopes nobody recognizes him so he can stand and wallow all by himself in the back of the room.

—

A hand on his waist startles him awake. He jolts and finds a body half slumped over him on the couch in Tina’s bedroom. Cuddling.

He retreated here to find some peace by himself. He sighs heavily. Whoever it is all he can see is the face of one of those cheap full headed Reagan masks you can get at the mall.

The stranger is wearing Tina’s favorite pink bathrobe. Steve snorts.

The stranger points at the mask’s eye. Tilts their head.

Steve shakes his, not understanding.

The stranger touches his cheek, trails a finger under his eye. Steve wipes at his face quickly, embarrassed.

“Must’ve been a bad dream,” he explains, not remembering any dream of the sort.

The strange settles on back him, content to lie there without a word. It’s a guy. Steve can tell by the hands.

“I think I fucked up. I’m too late.”

The head shifts on his chest.

“There’s this person I really admire. He’s really strong and brave and has grown a lot since I met him and I think if I tell him what I want to tell him it’ll break everything. I’ll mess everything up.”

Steve frowns, clenches his teeth. The stranger’s hand moves to the bend of his elbow.

“I have a habit of messing good things up. Breaking them. I’ve never really been good at relationships I guess, but he—I mean it’s not even like that.”

His elbow is squeezed lightly.

“The thing is I think I love him? He's been through so much. And I know he doesn't feel the same. And he almost died, right? And all I could think was, holy shit I can't lose this absolute piece of shit, and that's messed up in itself a little? But I still thought it and then he let me help him. After. Help him heal. And there's just been so much...so much history between us. And I feel like I've known him forever and that I'm supposed to know him until we're, like, old or something. But that's cheesy. God. I don't know what to do. And I’ve only ever liked girls before so this is—so I—Man what am I even—sorry Mr. President, I’m really drunk.” And he laughs.

And he realizes what exactly he’s admitted and to a total stranger and he tenses up and then he’s got a face full of Halloween Ronald Reagan and he’s confused if the guy’s just tried to headbutt him for maybe kind of being gay? Or half gay? He needs to ask Robin.

Then the mask is up and off and it’s Billy on his chest, looking down at him all wide eyed and intense and terrifying and Steve prepares to get the punch of his life right in the teeth. But then Billy smiles.

He smiles.

And Steve never thought Billy would be the one leaning in to kiss him.


End file.
